I'm a technology, privacy, and information security reporter and most recently the author of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a chronicle of the history and future of information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks and beyond.
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TSA Never Tested Full-Body Scans For Mass Transit, Except When It Did

When it comes to full body scanners, the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t always offer the same level of transparency that it imposes on your clothes.

Last week, I wrote about a new set of documents the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC) obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, revealing research proposals to bring full-body scanners to train stations, mass transit, and public events. Contracts included in the EPIC release showed plans to develop long-range scans that could assess what a subject carried from 30 feet away, along with studies that involved systems for x-ray scanners mounted in vans and “covert” scans of pedestrians.

When I reached the Department of Homeland Security for comment, a spokesperson offered only this immediate statement at the time: the “TSA has not tested the advanced imaging technology that is currently used at airports in mass transit environments and does not have plans to do so.”

But when I pressed for more information, the agency sent along a more thorough statement. ”None of the projects included in the documents released by EPIC are currently active – all have been terminated. The objective of the projects was to assess the technology,” the statement begins. And then the interesting bit: ”With the exception of the Rail Security Pilot Program, which conducted limited field testing in public locations in 2006, testing for all of these projects was conducted in labs, using volunteers.”

The “exception” in that second statement seems to clearly contradict the DHS’s first comment. Did the DHS test scanners on subway and train passengers, or didn’t it?

It did, says EPIC attorney Ginger McCall. The DHS conducted a pilot project using millimeter wave scans on passengers of the New Jersey PATH train system in 2006, as the second DHS statement acknowledges, and in 2009, as that statement fails to mention. She points out that the DHS’s first, misleading statement can be read as accurate: Airport scanners use backscatter x-rays, not millimeter wave scanners, though the two technologies both penetrate clothing and create similar privacy concerns in EPIC’s view.

“It’s disingenuous to lead people to believe that scanners haven’t moved out of the airport when in fact they have,” says McCall. And she warns that the TSA’s claim that it didn’t implement any of the projects proposed in EPIC’s documents is also carefully worded. It doesn’t go as far as to say that the TSA doesn’t have other plans for expanded use of scanners in public places, only that the specific studies revealed by EPIC were terminated. “Maybe the contracts we were sent didn’t result in implementations of scanners, but others will be implemented. Their wording has to be carefully parsed.”

Neither of two DHS public affairs officials I contacted over the last several days responded to my repeated requests for clarification about their statements. Given the agency’s willingness to offer up red herrings and half-truths, that may be just as well.

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This is another of virtually countless examples of obfuscation done by government (in all countries) by the tens (and often hundreds) of thousands (even millions in large countries) of representatives of the various branches in their abundant numbers of agencies. Politicians and bureaucrats are adept at guile, duplicity, avoidance and other misleading actions/statements.

The methods of government are to confuse and confound, while at the same time promoting fear and dependence – all for the purpose of justifying its existence.